Since the second year of the International Baccalaureate (IB) program at Berkeley High School’s inception, sophomores have been taking one semester of Comparative Values and Beliefs (CVB) and one semester of Berkeley International High School (BIHS) Economics, though this is set to change with the upcoming sophomore class.
The main focus behind the BIHS small school is global orientation and rigor, with an emphasis on critical thinking and contextualization. In addition, BIHS offers an academically rigorous pathway for the globally recognized IB Diploma for students during their junior and senior years. As a result, the Berkeley Unified School District school board of 2006 implemented CVB and BIHS Economics for the following school year in order to deepen students' understanding of global issues and concepts. CVB focuses on religion, world views, and understanding the world from different perspectives, while BIHS Economics is an introduction to economics and different economic systems from around the world.
Victor Aguilera, originally an economics teacher, became the CVB teacher at BHS after expressing interest in the course material. Aguilera emphasized the importance of practicality in the subjects students learn. “I think every class should be useful in some way,” Aguilera said. “That's what I tried to shape with this class. It's like, how do you make something that is abstract and talking about values useful to students' lives?” he said.
For the class of 2029, CVB is scheduled to shift from a semester-long mandatory course to a year-long optional elective. Aguilera noted that CVB was designed to help students realize how they view the world, in addition to understanding how different perspectives change that viewpoint. “We are living in a world where we're constantly consuming information … Sometimes it's necessary to stop and think about how we receive that information, how we perceive that information, and how that information shapes us,” Aguilera said. “That's what Comparative Values tries to do, in part, is to help understand the world around you, but also help understand who you are as a person.” Having CVB be a year-long course allows for students to learn about and go deeper into more topics, though some teachers worry about these students not being introduced to these themes and topics that are very prevalent in IB.
Part of the reason why CVB and BIHS Economics are being restructured is due to the California Assembly Bill #2927 which states that all students are required to take one semester of personal finance in order to graduate high school, something that the current course progression in BIHS does not fulfill. “We couldn't have some students in the sophomore year taking econ, and some not,” Melissa Jimenez, IB lead and IB/BIHS English teacher said, “Because then, by the time they become seniors, some kids might be ready with the graduation requirement, and some may not be, and it just creates a huge problem.” To fix this, the current plan is to remove the BIHS Economics class and instead create a personal finance class that all BIHS seniors will be required to take while keeping the IB Economics class as an elective. “The whole school is moving towards doing personal finance and gov in senior year.” Jimenez said. “So we're aligning, since we're making this change now, we're aligning our program with that change which is coming.”
Still, many students value keeping these classes for their sophomore year. Shakunthala Ananthakrishnan, a BIHS sophomore, is against the idea of changing the required economic class from 10th to 12th grade. “I feel like it's better to have a mandatory elective sophomore year,” Ananthakrishnan said, “because if they’re any electives that you have to catch up on – any credits, like art or language – senior year is your last chance to do it.” Ananthakrishnan also added that taking BIHS Economics in your sophomore year can help you decide if you want to take the year-long IB Economics in your junior or senior year. “(There are) people who got into IB, not too sure about econ, or thinking, ‘Oh, I don't think that's a such a good class.’ And then lot of my friends, including me, after taking the BIHS Econ semester long class, were like, ‘Oh, this topic is actually really interesting,’”
The final plans of next year’s CVB and BIHS Economics, as of March 2026, are not concrete. Whatever changes happen will not affect the BIHS classes of 2027 and 2028, but will affect classes in the future.